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| Ky Henderson, right, with Chris Connolly at the Star Trek Casino in Las Vegas after a few Borg bowls. |
Latvian jokes began as an instant messenger conversation between me and Ky Henderson. I was writing a book about the three years I spent living in Latvia and Ky was an editor at a magazine. I was working on a chapter about the Latvians' trademark 'black humor' and I wrote a quick joke and messaged it to Ky.
Latvian: Is so cold.
All: How cold is?
Latvian: Very. Also dark.
He immediately picked up the idea and soon sent back this:
I hope my son does not die during night.
What is "hope"?
Yes. I know what you say.
No. I am serious. What is hope?
In truth, I do not know.
We wrote about eight more jokes in the next 15 minutes and I was laughing my ass off. I saved that dialogue and would pull it up and re-read it now and again and I always thought it was funny. I sent some of the jokes to my brother Andrew and he got in on the act as well.
Although Andrew did visit me in Latvia, I was the only author of the original jokes with deep firsthand knowledge of Latvia. This is why the vein eventually came to encompass Cossacks and rape and a whole bunch of other things that aren't really Latvia-specific. As we worked out the original list of jokes, "Latvia" came to be a stand-in term for Obscure Former Soviet Nation Western People Don't Know Shit About. The reason Latvia inherited the spot was simply that I was writing about my experiences there when I wrote the first joke.
After the jokes sat on my hard drive for a year or so, I started thinking I should send them out into the world. The freelance market for something like that was pretty dim, so I sent them to our buddies at holytaco.com and requested that they put them on the site. I enjoyed a few days of increased hits on my site, then I considered the matter closed.
About a month after that I was working on my book when my phone went kind of crazy. Someone linked to the jokes somewhere on Reddit.com, and I went from maybe 30 hits a day to about 15,000. This was fun and exciting, and it still happens every once in a while and I get all juiced up about it.
To date, the jokes in their quiet repository on my page have been viewed around half a million times. I switched hit counters at one point, so I can't say accurately what the stats are. What I do know is that Latvian jokes have now become a "thing."People write their own jokes based on the theme. People have illustrated the jokes. There's a tiny twitter account, and this guy and this guy even acted the jokes out.
I have never debated with anyone about the appropriateness of the jokes because engaging angry people on the Internet about something as subjective about a joke is a shortcut to madness. Basically, if you find it funny, it's funny. If you don't, it's not. If you get offended, it's offensive. If you don't, it isn't. That's about the only statement I can make about that.
I think it's cool that the jokes have taken on a life of their own, and I hope people keep making them up forever. I still laugh when I read them and some of the new contributions to the genre are genius.
Uz redzēšanos. Lai jums veicas.
28 comments:
Some of those comments are HILARIOUS, especially from the people you pissed off.
In Latvia we no have jokes. :-(
There's a whole subreddit devoted to it now - http://www.reddit.com/r/LatvianJokes/. Although you can find some gems like the "Latvian Rhapsody" - http://redd.it/1dclnf, it's mostly bad jokes about potatoes.
https://www.facebook.com/DowcipyOLotewskichChlopach
We have also polish versions of your jokes!
https://www.facebook.com/halucynacjazniedozywienia
As a stereotype it's hard to piss of latvians as they are northen people, so it tells a lot about you, how fcking awful can someone be!
Don't like this realisation, poure out more latvian vodka as a punishment for Russia!
Average latvian speaks at least 3 languages, but americans, the same as russians, can't even learn the only one they have, and it's not hilarious, but just sad, just saying!
At least could try to leave some part of the truth, to your primitive, as latvians say "diršanu" (shitting), now it looks a bit idiotic, seems like you are laughing about famine and misfortune!
Hi.
I dont think youwe been in Latvia or have heard Latvian jokes couse theese are your interpretation of Russians about not knowing hope. You have missed a lot logic. Maybe thouse are jokes about you couse its not so cold as more colder places- Russia, Sweeden.
We have nothing to do with potatoe. And capitalist propoganda is scare tacktic of communisms. So your jokes are about dumb Russians half century ago and not Latvian jokes.
chris connolly is motherfucker in hardcore!
with love from LATVIA:*
You not Latvian, we Latvian, we rule the potato industry.
To you is big joke. To me is no joke. Only hunger.
You've been to Latvia? Really? Those jokes obviously are about mentally retarded Russians somewhere in the Far North of the Soviet Union. You probably think Latvians have no ability to laugh about themselves, if they find this offensive, but in actuality you need to preserve at least a trace of reality in the joke, otherwise you're not really making a joke about the people in question, you just show that you don't give a rat's ass about countries you visit and their people
Hello.
Today I have discovered phenomena called "Latvian jokes"
I have chuckled. They ARE funny.
However, as a neighbour of Latvians and a former soviet citizen (I am Lithuanian) I can see how they might be offensive. You see, Latvians are almost Lithuanians. Or vice versa. Would I liked my country and culture to be associated with this
/postsovietic hardship tale told by broken grammar english/? Probably not.
so yah,
To you is big joke. To me is no joke. Only hunger.
Yes, Yes, is funny but where is potato???
Where is potato?
I'm glad I found these and shared them with my friends BEFORE they became popular. I feel like a real OG hipster.
Most of these jokes don't really apply to Latvia, they can be funny, but only if you ignore that they are supposed to be about Latvia, otherwise they're perplexing. It's as cold as northern Germany, so, not cold enough to be a charasteristic, and the guys with the potatoe famine were the Ukrainians (and the Irish, but they were never kidnapped by Russia). Also the broken English is more Russian than Latvian, you didn't even throw in Latvian (swear) words! The subreddit also seems to think that we speak Russian natively because of all the "komrade"s. Now you've just taken up the term "Latvian jokes" which could've been used for actual Latvian jokes.
I am Latvian, love the jokes and the funniest thing of all was other Latvians getting butthurt about these jokes when they were at their peak. I don't know, the non-sequitur black humour just makes me laugh every once in a while.
Actual Latvian humour is nothing like this though.
Can you tell an actual Latvian joke? I know humor can be hard to translate. I find these jokes funny because of how dark and nonsensical they are, but I didn't really think they had anything to do with Latvians - sort of like how Polish jokes didn't really have anything to do with actual Polish people when I was growing up, it was just a nationality no one was familiar enough with to be offended about.
That said, I'd love to hear what real Latvians find funny.
only potat
Potat not funny, only rok.
I have a Latvian joke story that has taken on a life of its own.
In 2003, I was at a wireless conference and we went out on a late night excursion in a limo. One of the people in the limo was a very stoic engineer from a Latvian company. Someone asked him about what a gentleman's club in Latvia was like. After a very terse explanation, I threw this out....
What is worst part of Latvian Dancing Club?
Trying to slip chicken into dancer's underwear.
The limo erupted in laughter, although the Latvian was a bit puzzled at why that was so funny.
At the next conference, there were pictures of chickens all over the place. I pestered the Latvian contingent from their company and it became a joke across the entire conference. A picture of a chicken was the "Latvian Express Card, Don't Leave Riga Without It" Chicken tenders were "spare change". A rubber chicken was used during the award ceremony as their company won an award. We were asking how many chickens their devices cost. The whole thing took on a life of its own.
Several years later, I ran into the original engineer that was in the limo. We had a good conversation, and then he gets a funny look on his face. He asked if I had changed the name of my company. I told him yes, I changed the brand name of the company for marketing purposes. He got a huge smile on his face, and told me that the new name of my company - Vistabeam - was Latvian for Chicken Beam.
The Vistas (chickens) came home to roost.
I will see the Latvians next month at a conference, and we are going to make up Chicken Beam T-shirts for them. I hit your site to see if I could find a good joke to put on the back in Latvian. LOL
It is funny to see a bigot purposefully insulting people who have done no harm to him and then bragging about it. Takes a special kind of degenerate to do that.
To me the "Latvian jokes" are a measure of person's overall intelligence and culture. If a person is keen of "Latvian jokes", most likely he is a bigot, a racist and likes bullying others. It also portrays him as a rather stupid person with poor taste and prone to offensive behavior.
To the Vistabeam guy: Do you understand that what you just wrote can harm your company? I suspect that a lot of people will be displeased by your affinity for racist jokes. Do you realize that most of the Latvians do not even know of existence of the so called "Latvian jokes", which are an artificial construct and actually have nothing to do with Latvia and Latvians whatsoever? Don't you realize what asshole you do actually look to them and don't you really understand how annoying it is, once they get over the "a bit puzzled" phase and it dawns on them what you are all about? Don't you really not understand that the Latvians jokes have no relation to Latvians at all and you are just picking on random people? No, you, don't right? Well. Go ahead, make your T-shirts, lose the customers! Bonne chance!
Do not use unclean or cheap sanitary pads which can cause infection. It is better to have sex with your partner only instead of inviting trouble through strangers. examples
Regarding persecution of Latvians during Soviet regime, these so calle jokes are quite disgusting. Would you publish jokes about Irish during 1840s famine or jokes about persecuted Scottish jacobites in 18th century?
i Latvian have president a jew but a potato, cry happi to get salt
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